


Reflecting Home

by restrained_ubiquity



Series: OQ Prompt Party 2018 [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, OQ Prompt Party 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 13:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14045154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/restrained_ubiquity/pseuds/restrained_ubiquity
Summary: Prompt 29 - During the Missing Year, Regina sees herself in the mirror with Robin's tattoo





	Reflecting Home

She’d blamed the mirror at first. Thinking it must have been enchanted to show her—what? Her worst fear? What she desired most? A cruel fate that could never be? So she’d smashed it; sent a bold of magic out that shattered it into a thousand pieces then another that reduced the shards to sand. 

That was months ago and several broken mirrors and it’s still there. His tattoo. The lion crest that peeks out from the blankets he’s tangled around himself somehow branded on her own arm. But only in the mirror. In every mirror, it would seem. Every polished silver, every still water, whatever bears her reflection shows part of him reflecting back to her. Are they connected? Is pixie dust that powerful? Could he really be her soulmate and what does that even mean? Could she ask that of him?

“Come back to bed, milady,” his voice is graveled, soft, tattooed arm reaching for her, drawing her back into the warmth of blankets and sleep and him.  
She’s retakes her position splayed across his chest; his fingers trace a steady path from just behind her ear to her hip. Back and forth, up and down. Her own hand lazily explores his skin, tracing the outline of the crest of his tattoo then the lion at the center. 

“Tell me about this,” she whispers to the small space between them, not wanting to disturb the calm night around them.

“mmm tattoo?” he mumbles sleepily into her hair. Shifting slightly to prop himself up higher on the pillows so he can look down at her. “It’s my own little bit of magic, I suppose.” Her breath hitches at that and she stiffens slightly in his arms. “Regina?” he questions, more awake now, squeezing at her hip.

“What kind of magic?” she asks forcing her body to relax back into him. “I’ve never sensed anything from it,” she runs her hand over it again, feeling deeply this time, seeking, but finds nothing. 

“I was a boy when I got it. I’d run off from my family’s estate, again. I’d been roaming the woods for days when I stumbled across the lair of a Seer. She gave me food, a place to sleep, and this tattoo. She said it would show me my home. Never really knew what she meant by it though.”

“How do you know it’s magic then and not just some story a crazy old woman wove for you?” she runs her fingertips over it again, barely making contact, making him shiver.

“It doesn’t reflect,” Robin scoots down again, continues his wondering caress up and down her spine.

Regina’s fingers tighten around his arm involuntarily. “What do you mean?” she asks, breath quickening because she knows exactly what he means.

“I took me years to even notice it. When you’re always on the move you don’t spend much time staring in the mirror, but whenever I do it’s not there.” He raises his arm, looks at the ink in the moonlight then shrugs his shoulders, wrapping his arms around her once more. “I can’t explain it. I don’t really give it much thought anymore.”

“Show me,” she’s pulling away from him and kicking at blankets.

“Regina, what’s going on?” He doesn’t understand. Ten minutes ago they were asleep, before that they were too wrapped up in each other for anything to have gone wrong. “ Why the sudden interest?”

“Robin, please. Just show me,” Regina sits on the edge of their bed and stares down at him. There’s a desperation in her voice he’s not heart before, a fear in her eyes that he wants to be rid of.

He kisses her hand before he untangles himself from blankets, takes her hand and walks them to the mirror Regina had been staring into before. Robin hugs her from behind for a moment just watching them in the mirror. If you’d told him months ago that he’d be holding the Evil Queen in the middle of the night, admiring the way the moonlight shone against her skin, he’d have thought you mad, but here they were. All those spiteful words and hateful glares seem a lifetime ago. He’d always seen through them anyway.  
She leans back into him, lets her eyes close to the feeling of him solid behind her, his arms wrapped around her. “It would show me my home,” he had just said. Could that mean what she thinks? Could she be his home? It’s a fairytale, a foolish notion she should not give hope to, but she fears it’s already too late. She loves him. As much as she’s tried to deny it, it seems their fate was tied together long ago. Looking down at his arms wrapped around her, Regina uses her left to unwind his right, watching in the mirror as his arm appears bare in the reflection.

Robin watches her eyes dart back and forth from his arm to the mirror. Her right arm is still pressed tightly against her and she’s fisting the fabric of her nightdress. “Regina, please,” he urges bringing both arms back around her. He wishes nothing more than to settle whatever has her so restless this evening. How his tattoo plays a part in that, the thief cannot fathom.

“I started seeing it after we first met. It was faint at first, just a shadow and I thought it was a trick of my mind, that I was just tired or needed to eat or…” she trails off, laughing to herself as Robin waits patiently behind her, watching her face in the mirror. “The night you first kissed me I saw it clear as day in the mirror in my chambers. I destroyed it because it scared me, because I wasn’t ready to accept what it means. But I see it everywhere now; every time I see my reflection I see part of you.” She lets her arm fall down, turns palm up to face the mirror and watches Robin’s eyes go wide at the sight of his tattoo on her arm.

“How is this possible?” Robin runs his hand up and down her forearm, but the image doesn’t change.

“I’ve been asking myself that for months. Tinkerbell said,” Regina stops short, unsure of how much to tell him, unsure of what will push him away. But he’s still here, still holding her and doesn’t give any indication that he’s going anywhere so she decides to tell him the rest. “Tinkerbell said we’re soulmates, destined to be together. She took me to meet you a lifetime ago, before I ever became the Evil Queen. I was scared. I ran away without ever approaching you. I only saw your tattoo.”

“Destined,” Robin breathes the word into her skin, presses a kiss to her temple. “I like the sound of that.”

“You’re not afraid?” her voice breaks, she’s trembling against him despite the warm night air.

“Of you?” Robin turns her in his arms so that her back is to the mirror. She looks up at him, eyes watering, jaw tense. He slips his fingers into her hair, rubs along the back of her neck as he drops his forehead to hers. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid to love you. I’m not afraid of what Seers or fairies or witches say or do that brings us together or tries to tear us apart. I love you, Regina.”

“People that love me get hurt.” She closes her eyes, fights to hold in the tears that fall for Daniel dead in her arms, her father dead at her feet, her son worlds away and a stranger to her. “I should have pushed you away a hundred times.”

“No disrespect, Milady, but pushing me away is the one thing you’re not strong enough to do. I’m quite persistent and I have been told, stubborn, when I set my mind to something.” He expected her to laugh at that, to have some witty retort, but she stays silently pressed against him, tears wetting her lashes and slipping down her cheeks. “You’re not afraid of loving,” realization hits him like a punch to the gut. “You’re afraid of that love being the reason you lose someone else.” 

She nods against him, moves her forehead from his to tuck herself against his neck. He holds her tighter, bends down so that his breath is hot against shoulder. “You’re right. I’m not strong enough to push away. I should be. Maybe it is fate, maybe there are outside forces that make it so damned hard to be without you. What if everything ends horribly? What if I lose everything again?”

“What if you don’t?” Robin asks. “What if everything we’ve both been through—the good and the bad—what if all of that was supposed to bring us here, to bring us together so we could sort it all out and move on? Together. What if the timing was never right before? If you had found me that night, or if I’d have sought out some mystical reason behind my tattoo, I wouldn’t have my son, you wouldn’t have had yours. Or this life, or these families we’ve made. We wouldn’t be us, Regina. Here and now you are the woman that I love, the woman that I want to be with and if anything along the way had been altered who’s to say you’d be the person in my arms right now, or that I would be the man you would let hold in underneath the moonlight.” He places a kiss to her shoulder, lets his lips linger there as she wipes away the tears that haven’t soaked into his shirt. When she lifts her head and steps back just enough to face him, he takes her hands, lifting their arms to rest against his chest. “This tattoo, it’s a neat trick. Glowing pixie dust is pretty to look at. Neither of those things is us. We’re here. We’re true. With or without all that prophecy, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.” 

She’s quiet for a while, stares at his face, at their joined hands, back to his eyes: blue and bright and so full of love for her she’s certain her heart will burst. “Come back to bed,” she says softly, smiles up at him, kissing his knuckles before leading him back to their nest of blankets.

“As you wish, Milady,” he crawls in behind her, pulls her back tightly to his chest, and holds her. Her arm rests on the pillow and he can’t help but smile. He may not be able to see it, but he knows it’s there and although he meant what he said—he’d love her regardless—knowing she’s his destiny, his home, gives him a comfort he didn’t know he needed.


End file.
